Did NPR drop the hammer too quickly on vanquished CEO Vivian Schiller, who was scuttled in the immediate wake of the National Punked Radio sting by the pimplicious James O’Keefe?

Good question, now that strange bedfellows Glenn Beck and NPR itself have examined the tapes that purportedly revealed an NPR fundraiser making anti-Semitic remarks, disparaging Tea Party conservatives, and dismissing the need for federal funding of public broadcasting.

And guess what? Beck and NPR concluded that parts of the tapes were “taken out of context.”

Footage posted online last week by conservative activist James O’Keefe III captured NPR’s chief fundraising official, Ron Schiller, disparaging conservatives and the Tea Party and saying NPR would be better off without federal funding.

Fueled in part by the attention given the video by the conservative Daily Caller website, an 11 1/2-minute version of O’Keefe’s hidden camera video ricocheted around the blogosphere Tuesday.

It mortified NPR, which swiftly repudiated Schiller’s remarks and in short order triggered his ouster along with that of his boss, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, who is no relation to Ron Schiller.

A closer review of those tapes, however, shows that many of Ron Schiller’s most provocative remarks were presented in a misleading way.

So maybe the NPR Board of Directors (see here for a seriously unflattering description of them) jumped the gun?